Draft essay. Feedback welcome.
Naturalistic Atheism
Naturalistic atheism is a blog dedicated to the discussion of arguments, news, and other information relevant to naturalistic atheism, the view that no supernatural beings exist.
Saturday, May 14, 2022
Monday, May 02, 2022
Swinburne's Free Will Theodicy for the Holocaust
In this post, I want to critically assess Christian philosopher Richard Swinburne's theodicy for the Holocaust. I think his theodicy is of philosophical interest, for three reasons. First, I think Swinburne is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, natural theologians of the 20th-century. Second, Swinburne is an evidentialist and Bayesian; he shares the same general epistemological framework used by Paul Draper, who is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, atheist philosophers of religion. Third, Swinburne has not only written a book-length defense of Christian theism against the argument from evil, but has explicitly offered his theistic explanation for the Holocaust. For these three reasons, then, Swinburne makes a perfect foil for my evidential argument from the Holocaust.
In his book-length defense of Christian theism against the argument from evil, Providence and the Problem of Evil, Swinburne comments specifically on the Holocaust. I want to quote what Swinburne writes about the Holocaust in its entirety. He writes:
Human choices, I have emphasized, may reinforce each other and have long-term consequences; and it is good that they should. The possibility that our bad choices will cause the suffering of victims distant in time and space (which God is unlikely to prevent) gives us a yet greater responsibility in the choices we make. The suffering and deaths of the Jewish victims of the Nazi concentration camps were the result of a web of bad choices stretching back over centuries and continents. So many humans spread false rumours about Jews, developed anti-Semitic propaganda without considering counter-arguments, limited the employment and educational possibilities for Jews, confined Jews to ghettos, and so on, until Hitler was able to issue orders to exterminate Jews which had some prospect of being carried out. And the sufferings and deaths in the concentration camps have in turn caused or made possible a whole web of actions and reactions stretching forward over the century of sympathy for victims, helping their relatives (to set up the state of Israel), avoiding any such event ever again, etc. The possibility of the Jewish suffering and deaths at the time made possible serious heroic choices for people normally (in consequence often of their own bad choices and the choices of others) too timid to make them (e.g. to harbour the prospective victims), and for people normally too hard-hearted (again as a result of previous bad choices) to make them, e.g., for a concentration camp guard not to obey orders. And they make possible reactions of courage (e.g., by the victims), of compassion, sympathy, penitence, forgiveness, reform, avoidance of repetition, etc., by others. (On the goodness of different kinds of reaction to suffering, see the next chapter.) Of course, I am not saying that anyone other than God would have the right to allow such things to happen, without intervening to stop them. (On God's right, see Chapter 12.) And, as I am emphasizing throughout, there is obviously a limit to the moral evil which God will allow us to cause (as there is to the natural evil by which he will allow us to be afflicted), but it is not obvious where that limit lies. And note again that the suffering in the Nazi concentration camps was the result of a very large number of free bad choices over many centuries, and made possible very many good choices.[1]
According to Swinburne, God was morally justified in allowing the Nazis to murder six million Jews (who Swinburne thinks are God's chosen people). Why? Because that gave the Nazis significant freedom to make "bad choices." Why was it good for God to allow the Nazis to make 'bad choices' like murdering six million Jews? Because that made it possible for other people (who were neither Nazis nor Jews) to (i) show sympathy for victims; (ii) help their relatives, and (iii) harbor the victims. It made it possible for (iv) Nazi guards to disobey orders. Finally, it made it possible for victims to show (v) compassion, (vi) sympathy, (vii) penitence, (viii) forgiveness, and (ix) reform.
This version of the free will theodicy employs the following expansion of theism:
T2: God exists, and one of His final ends is for humans to have the freedom* to make very important moral decisions.[2]
Let us agree that (i) - (ix) are all goods, viz., things which have positive value. Even granting that, this theodicy is not a strong (=successful) answer to the evidential argument from evil.
Notes
Sunday, May 01, 2022
Reply to a (Sunni) Islamic Theodicy for the Argument from Pain and Pleasure
T*: God exists, and God uses human pain to purify the soul.
"In even a prick of the finger, the Muslim has sins wiped away from him and in such pain as if he is made anew if he has actually taken the Hadith of the Prophet any further than his own lips. So while it may not fully fulfill the purpose of detection of threats or illnesses, it does its job in relation to the Islamic framework assuming its truth."
- (a) the humans experiences purification pain, which occurs reasonably soon after the human sins, creating the need for soul purification, and the amount or intensity of the purification pain is proportional to the degree of wrongdoing committed by the sinner; or
- (b) the human experiences non-purification pain which is biologically appropriate but not biologically gratuitous.
My Reply to the "There is No Such Thing as Evil if God Doesn't Exist" Objection
I inserted this into my most recent update to my essay, "The Holocaust is Strong Evidence Against Theism," but I'm reposting it as a standalone blog post to draw attention to it.
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Do Euthyphro-Style Dilemmas Provide a Decisive Refutation of Theistic Metaethics?
For roughly 30 years, I have been skeptical of the idea that Euthyphro-style dilemmas provide a decisive refutation of theistic metaethics. I have finally started to organize my thoughts on this topic.
The link below is to an incomplete draft of an essay I've been writing about Euthyphro-style dilemmas against theistic metaethics. Any comments would be appreciated.
UPDATE (16-March-2022):
In response to the excellent feedback from Jason Thibodeau (see the comments below), I have slightly revised the draft. Version 2 of the draft may be found here:
Monday, January 31, 2022
The Holocaust is Strong Evidence Against Theism
Primo Levi Auschwitz survivor
— Dave of Letters (@liverational22) August 6, 2021
"The notions that our world comes from God and is governed by God are hard to sustain if one looks seriously at evil. What egocentric presumption to think that God listens for our repentance and acts accordingly!" pic.twitter.com/J2gNxTEdNt
In this blog post, I intend to defend a weaker version of Primo Levi's claim. I do not claim that Auschwitz makes God's existence impossible. Rather, I intend to argue that the Holocaust is extremely strong evidence against theism and, other evidence held equal, makes God's existence improbable.
1. Definitions
- Source Idealism (a/k/a "supernaturalism"): The mental exists and, if the physical exists, the mental explains why the physical exists.
- Source Physicalism (a/k/a "naturalism"): The physical exists and, if the mental exists, the physical explains why the mental exists.
- Monotheism (hereafter "theism"): A type of supernaturalism. It adds on the claim that exactly one personal mental entity exists; it has the title "God;" God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect; and, if the physical exists, God created the physical for a purpose. N.B. that "theism" as defined here excludes:
- "deism" (the belief in an all-powerful and all-knowing being who is morally indifferent);
- "quasi-theism" (the belief that there exists a creator god who is not both all-powerful and all-knowing),
- "polytheism" (the belief that there exist many gods but not "God"),
- "pantheism" (God is the universe), or
- "panentheism" (the belief that the world is in God and God is in the world).
2. Preamble for Philosophers
A "logical argument from evil" is an argument which claims that theism is logically inconsistent with any evil, whereas an "evidential argument from evil" does not involve an inconsistency claim. Instead, it merely claims that God is improbable because of evil. Furthermore, only the late atheist philosopher J.L. Mackie defended an argument which claimed that some fact about evil is incompatible with theism; the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga showed that any kind of evil is compatible with God's existence; and nobody today now defends a logical argument from evil.
But, in fact, much of the above way of thinking about the distinction is wrong. First, logical arguments from evil aren't dead; they are alive and well. Recent and contemporary defenders include Raymond Bradley, Richard Gale, J.L. Schellenberg, Quentin Smith, Jordan Howard Sobel, James Sterba, and Ryan Stringer.[1] Second, Plantinga refuted Mackie's broad claim that the existence of evil is incompatible with theism; he did not refute the sorts of narrower inconsistency claims made by some logical arguments from evil.[2] For example, some arguments from evil claim that theism is inconsistent with gratuitous or pointless evil; whether one agrees with these arguments or not, this type of argument was not refuted by Plantinga in his refutation of Mackie. But let's put these objections to the side.
3. Qualitative Features of the Holocaust
The Holocaust (1933–1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators.[3]
The intent was to annihilate, without remainder, the Jewish people. This is genocide in its purest, most horrific configuration. What occurred to the Jews was not exactly like what occurred to other people who came within the German grasp, though these others suffered in the same concentration camps and endured the same physical and emotional deprivations. What was singular about the Nazi plan for the Jews was the intention to completely and categorically destroy an entire people simply because they existed, and for no other reason. The fact of existence as a Jew was reason enough for the Jewish death sentence. And this was the rationale for turning 1.5 million Jewish children into smoke. No other intention seems as purely evil. This intention marks the Holocaust as a different kind of evil, a kind of evil which is unfathomable.[5]
3.1. Biological Pain and the Suffering of Holocaust Victims
The overall conditions of camp life ensured that many people fell sick from the very first months, and their numbers rose steadily over time. Physical harassment of the prisoners resulted in numerous broken limbs and suppurating sores on the buttocks, usually after flogging.
The winter, and also late fall and early spring, saw numerous cases of colds, pneumonia, and frostbite which developed not infrequently into gangrene. The dreadful sanitation conditions caused skin diseases, and above all scabies.
Almost all prisoners suffered from boils, rashes, and abscesses that resulted mostly from vitamin deficiency and infections.
1942-1943 (and especially 1942) went down in the history of the camp as a period of raging epidemics, and especially typhus, which claimed the greatest number of lives. Many prisoners suffered from tuberculosis, ague (malaria), meningitis, pemphigus, dysentery, and Durchfall, a disorder of the digestive system caused by improper and inadequate food.
In camp conditions, all these illnesses were highly acute. A characteristic camp illness was starvation sickness. It was usually accompanied by diarrhea (often bloody), swollen legs, impaired vision and hearing, memory loss, nervous breakdown and, above all, exhaustion to the point of collapse. The majority of prisoners suffered from several medical conditions simultaneously.[6]
For example, is there some greater good that, because of its logical connections to suffering, requires that suffering be used to motivate animals to pursue the biological goal of self-preservation? Does some moral end make it desirable for suffering to continue even when it serves no biological purpose? ... On the no-design hypothesis, Darwinian explanations of good and evil work whether the answers to these and many similar questions is 'yes' or 'no.' But on theism, the answer must in every single case be 'yes.' On theism, natural selection cannot drive evolution unless its doing so coincides with the moral goals of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect creator. And that's a really big coincidence that the no-design hypothesis doesn't need.[7]
3.2. The Horrors of the Holocaust
For the sake of argument, let me define "horrors" as "evils participation in the doing or suffering of which constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant's life could (given their inclusion in it) be a great good to him/her on the whole." Dramatic examples include the rape of a woman and axing off of her arms, psychophysical torture whose ultimate goal is disintegration of personality, betrayal of one's deepest loyalties, cannibalizing of one's own off-spring, child abuse of the sort described by Ivan Karamazov, participation in the Nazi death camps, the explosion of nuclear bombs over populated areas. More "domestic" horrors are found in corporate cultures of dishonesty co-opting workers into betraying their deepest values, parental incest, school-ground bullying, having to choose which of one's children shall live and which be executed by terrorist, being the accidental and/or unwitting agent of the disfigurement or death of those ones loves best, schizophrenia and severe clinical depression, and degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis that unravel and/or imprison the person we once knew.[8]
- On the train which transported Jews from Romania to Auschwitz, Wiesel reports meeting a woman who had been separated from her husband and two of her sons. In Wiesel's words, "The separation had totally shattered her.... [She] had lost her mind."[9] She experienced hallucinations and began to scream, no longer able to care for the little boy next to her who was her son. Eventually her outbursts were so unbearable that the other Jewish passengers bound, gagged, and hit her until she fell silent.[10]
- When the train arrived at Auschwitz, Wiesel's family, like all the rest, was separated by sex. Because his Wiesel's mother and younger sister died at Auschwitz, this separation meant he would never see them again.[11]
- Shortly after his separation, Wiesel witnessed the bodies of small children and babies being emptied from a truck and burned in a ditch. He writes, "Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes . . . children thrown into the flames. (Is it any wonder that ever since then, sleep tends to elude me?)"[12]
If indeed God is to be construed as perfection personified, then what could be better for finite creatures than to enter ever more fully into the maximally great riches and beauty and glory of God?[14]
3.3. Divine Silence
In such instances the parent attends directly to the child throughout its period of suffering, comforts the child to the best of her ability, expresses her concern and love for the child in ways that are unmistakably clear to the child, assures the child that the suffering will end, and tries to explain, as best she can, why it is necessary for her to permit the suffering even though it is in her power to prevent it. In short, during these periods of intentionally permitted intense suffering, the child is consciously aware of the direct presence, love, and concern of the parent, and receives special assurances from the parent that, if not why, the suffering (or the parent's permission of it) is necessary for some distant good.[18]
3.4. Former Believers
Some of the men spoke of God: His mysterious ways, the sins of the Jewish people, and the redemption to come. As for me, I had ceased to pray. I concurred with Job! I was not denying His existence, but I doubted his absolute justice.[19]
3.5. The Argument so Far
E1: Many, if not most, Holocaust victims experienced biologically gratuitous physical pain.
E2: Holocaust victims experienced and/or witnessed events so horrific that the events constituted prima facie reasons for each victim to doubt whether the victim's life (given their inclusion in the Holocaust) was a great good to the victim on the whole.
E3: So many victims of the Holocaust did not report feeling God's comforting presence.
E4: So many devout Jewish survivors of the Holocaust became nonbelievers.
The arguments presented in sections 3.1 through 3.4 are a cumulative case. If we let Pr(X | Y) represent the epistemic probability of X conditional upon y; N represent naturalism; and T represent theism, then this cumulative case may be summarized as follows.
(1) Pr(E1 | N) >! Pr(E1 |T). (from section 3.1)
(2) Pr(E2 | E1 & N) >! Pr(E2 | E1 & T). (from section 3.2)
(3) Pr(E3 | E1 & E2 & N) > Pr(E3 | E1 & E2 & T). (from section 3.3)
(4) Pr(E4 | E1 & E2 & E3 & N) >! Pr(E4 | E1 & E2 & E3 & T). (from section 3.4)
(5) Therefore, Pr(E | N) >! Pr(E | T). (from premises (1) - (4) )
(5') Naturalism has much more predictive power than Theism does with respect to the Holocaust.
Having now shown that the occurrence of the Holocaust is very much less probable on theism than on naturalism, let us now turn to the task of using this result in an argument against theism.
4. An Argument from the Holocaust Against Theism
(5') Naturalism has much more predictive power than Theism does with respect to the Holocaust.(6) Naturalism is much simpler than Theism.(7) Any epistemic advantages that Theism has over Naturalism (i.e., any factors that raise the ratio of the probability of Theism to the probability of Naturalism) do not, even when combined, suffice to offset the epistemic advantages that Naturalism has over Theism if premises 1 and 2 are true.So, (8) Theism is probably false.
5. Theistic Objections
5.1. Ineffective Replies
M: Moral properties, including both value (moral goodness and evil) and deontic (required, forbidden, permitted) properties, are objective-1.
M': Moral properties, including both value (moral goodness and evil) and deontic (required, forbidden, permitted) properties, are objective-2.
Notice that M' is inconsistent with moral properties being metaphysically dependent on God or any fact about God. If M' is true, then the proposition, "There is no such thing as objective-2 evil if theism is false," is itself false. So, again: what relevance could M possibly have to my claim that the Holocaust is strong evidence against theism?
The only conceivable way that it could be relevant would be if it showed that premise (5) or its equivalent (5') were false. But how could it do this? Again, here is (5):
(5) Therefore, Pr(E | N) >! Pr(E | T).
Notice that (5) contains an inequality. If M somehow lowers the value on the left-hand side, raises the value on the right-hand side, or both, then M refutes (5). But does it? M does not affect the value on the left-hand side, Pr(E | N), because objective-1 morality plays no role in the reasons for naturalism's 'prediction' of the Holocaust. But what about the right-hand side, Pr(E | T)? M does not boost Pr(E | T) simply because T entails M. On the assumption that theism is true, the objective-1 moral evil of the Holocaust is what gives us strong reason to predict its non-occurrence. In short, M gives us no reason at all to think that (5) or its equivalent (5') is false.
5.2. More Promising Replies
T2: God exists, and one of His final ends is for humans to have the freedom* to make very important moral decisions.
As Draper acknowledges, T2 accurately predicts the existence of evils for which humans are responsible.[27] But, as Draper also points out, T2 also makes three inaccurate predictions. First, T2 inaccurately predicts that humans would only be given great responsibility when they are worthy of it. Second, T2 inaccurately predicts that humans would be benefitted by having such responsibility. Third, T2 inaccurately predicts that humans who abuse their responsibility would have their responsibility decreased by God until they are worthy of a second chance. T2's predictive success is greatly outweighed by its three predictive failures.[28] Adapting Draper's conclusion to this paper, therefore, we may say that Pr(Holocaust | T2) is not significantly greater than Pr(Holocaust | theism & ~T2).
Conclusion
Notes
Sunday, January 23, 2022
Baggett's and Wall's Proposed IBE Criteria
Are the proposed criteria for explanation candidates meaningful, unambiguous, and justified?
Abductive criteria for narrowing the field of explanation candidates down to one can vary, but here is one attempt at it: (1) explanatory power; (2) explanatory scope; (3) plausibility; (4) degree of "ad hoc-ness"; and (5) conformity with other beliefs. The more explanatory power and scope and the more plausibility and conformity with other beliefs an explanation has, the better an explanation it is. The less ad hoc (adjusted, contrived, artificial) the explanation, the better as well. The trick is to subject all the explanation options to these tests in order to pick the one that is the best--and therefore the most likely true--explanation. (18)
The Meaning of B&W's IBE Criteria
B&W are unclear regarding how the criteria of explanatory scope and explanatory power (henceforth, scope and power) are to be interpreted and how these differ. Are they independent? If not,then how are they related? B&W do not say. Their use of the word "more" suggests that, perhaps, B&W interpret scope and power as being roughly quantitative. But, given that this is so, then, to be clear, B&W needs to explain whether and, if so, how power thus interpreted differs from power as this is understood by other leading proponents of T such as Swinburne and the McGrews -- viz., as the Bayesian likelihoods of T and its rivals. B&W's insufficiently clear IBE approach fails to show how scope and power are interrelated — a deficiency that can be rectified by the Bayesian approach. Thus, on the Bayesian approach, the scope and power of any hypothesis Hi are most naturally interpreted as correlative aspects of the Bayesian likelihood P(E|B&Hi), i.e., the degree to which it is rational to believe evidence E on the basis of Hi in conjunction with background information B. On this interpretation, the scope of Hi is the range of facts contained in E in the term P(E|B&Hi) — the greater the range of facts, the greater the scope. Correlatively, the power of Hi is the magnitude of the term P(E|B&Hi) itself — the degree of likelihood that Hi confers on E — the greater the magnitude, the greater the power. The Bayesian approach shows why these are not independent criteria, contrary to how B&W seem to treat them. For, in general, the greater/lesser the scope, the lesser/greater the power, i.e., the greater/fewer the number of facts stated in E, the lower/higher the value of P(E|B&Hi). This is not to deny that Hi may be so strong that it can attain relatively great scope and power simultaneously. But, nonetheless, if the scope is increased, then the power must decrease, and vice versa — if only minutely. (paraphrase of C&C)
"Plausibility": The meaning of "plausibility" is also problematic. And so paraphrasing what C&C write (regarding Craig's argument) and applying it to B&W yields the following.
B&W's IBE approach requires that hypotheses be compared on the basis of what they call “plausibility.” But what is plausibility and how is it to be assessed? Quoting Alvin Plantinga, B&W concede that "part of what makes an explanation good or bad is its [antecedent] probability" (20). This is just what Bayesians call "prior probability." After all, the plausibility of a hypothesis is surely a function of what the hypothesis states and of the background information relevant to it; but this is precisely the same for prior probability. Furthermore, both are matters of degree. Indeed, apart from there being a formalism for one and not the other, they seem indistinguishable. It thus seems entirely natural to identify the plausibility of any hypothesis Hi (e.g., T) with its prior probability P(Hi|B), i.e., the degree to which it is rational to believe Hi solely on the basis of B. Identifying plausibility with prior probability provides a clear interpretation of this notion. Thus, for example, the plausibility of the hypothesis that Galileo would be charged with heresy is simply its prior probability and is thus determined in precisely the same way — using the same background information. Moreover, prior probability has the advantage of occurring within a Bayesian framework that gives it a more precise function in determining the probability of a hypothesis on the total evidence for it. What B&W mean by plausibility seems indistinguishable from prior probability. (paraphrase of C&C)
There is an important difference between the Resurrection explanation (R), "God raised Jesus from the dead," and the explanation of classical theism (T), which I take B&W to define as something like the proposition, "There exists the greatest possible being who exemplifies all the great-making properties to the greatest maximal degree and to the greatest extent to which they're mutually consistent with one another."[1] Because T is a potential "ultimate" metaphysical explanation, there are no facts in our background information, extrinsic to the definition of T, which could affect the plausibility or prior probability of T. Only the content of T itself can affect T's prior probability. But because the content is "intrinsic" to T, it makes more sense to speak of T's "intrinsic probability" rather than its "prior probability." Although I won't defend these claims here, I believe the following two statements are true:
- Intrinsic probability is determined by modesty, coherence, and nothing else.
- The intrinsic probability of T is much lower than the intrinsic probability of naturalism, but not hopelessly lower.
"Degree of Ad Hoc-ness": B&W appeal to "degree of ad hoc-ness." I have no objection to how they define it, but I do wonder how "degree of ad hoc-ness" differs from "plausibility." As before, it seems to me that the Bayesian approach here is superior to the IBE approach. Suppose we make a distinction between a "core" hypothesis, such as classical theism, and an auxiliary hypothesis, such as Christian theism. If we wanted to determine if Christian theism were ad hoc, we could look at two things First, we could assess the prior probability of Christian theism conditional upon our background knowledge (including, for the sake of argument, classical theism). Second, we could assess whether there is any independent evidence for the auxiliary hypothesis, by using P(I|B&Christian Theism), where I represents "independent evidence, that is, evidence independent of the evidence for classical theism" and B represents our background knowledge. In my opinion, this is much more clear than the IBE approach favored by B&W.
"Conformity with Other Beliefs": This criterion seems clear enough; I have no "in principle" objection to it. In practice, I wonder how B&W will apply this criterion to the rival explanations they consider. But we may leave that topic for another time.
Summary
B&W explicitly state they intend their argument to be understood as an IBE. Their proposed IBE criteria are problematic in large part because most of them contain varying degrees of ambiguity. I believe that all of these ambiguities could be clarified by eschewing an IBE approach and instead adopting a Bayesian approach.
Notes
[1] See David Baggett and Jerry Walls, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 52. Given that "classical theism" is B&W's preferred explanation for the facts about morality which they believe require an explanation, it strikes this writer as extremely odd that an explicit definition of "classical theism" appears nowhere to be found in their later book, God and Cosmos. At the time I wrote this blog post, I had read up to page 79 of the latter. I would have expected to find an explicit definition by this point in the book.
Baggett and Walls on 'The' Moral Argument vs. 'The' Argument from Evil
The idea that there is some sort of connection between moral arguments for theism, on the one hand and arguments from evil against theism, on the other hand, is not new. In this blog post, I want to comment on a very cryptic statement made by Baggett and Walls about this connection. In their book God and Cosmos, they write:
... Second, it should be said in such a case that the probability of theism has increased (by much or a little) relative to morality; in theory the probability of atheism could increase or decrease relative to other phenomena. (However, the success of the moral argument would decisively undercut the problem of evil, which tends to be counted as the best evidence against theism.) (20, boldface mine)
This is a strong claim by itself, but it is even stronger in light of how modest their abductive moral argument is. In my last post, I steelmanned their moral argument as follows:
- Hypothesis T of the set {T, A1, ..., An} is the best explanation of the evidence E in being superior to its rivals {A1, ..., An} in satisfying the five criteria for explanation candidates.
- The explanation candidates {T, A1, ..., An} are a jointly exhaustive set.
- Therefore, other evidence held equal, T is more probable than naturalism.
- O [a statement consisting of known facts about biological pain and pleasure] is known to be true.
- Theism (T) is not much more probable intrinsically than the hypothesis of indifference (HI) [i.e., Pr(|T|) is not much greater than Pr(|HI|)].
- O is much more likely on the assumption that the hypothesis of indifference is true than it is on the assumption that theism is true [i.e., Pr(O | HI) >! Pr(O | T)].
- So, other evidence held equal, theism is probably false.
Steelmanning the Abductive Moral Argument of David Baggett and Jerry Walls
Chad of the blog "Truthbomb Apologetics" recently tweeted about the abductive, cumulative moral argument for God's existence set forth by Christian philosophers David Baggett and Jerry Walls in their book God and Cosmos.
Baggett/Walls: A Four-Fold Abductive Cumulative Argument
— Chad (@TBapologetics) January 21, 2022
1. Moral facts, moral knowledge, moral transformation, and moral rationality require robust explanation.
2. The best explanation of these phenomena is God.
3. Therefore, God (probably) exists. @moralapologetic
As someone with great interest in metaethics and moral arguments for theism, this book had been on my "to buy" list for sometime. I decided to pick up a copy on Kindle.
With the disclaimer that I haven't finished reading the book yet, the first thing I did after downloading the Kindle version of the book was to scan the book for a schema or other formal representation of the logical structure of their argument in premise and conclusion form. I didn't find one. So I decided to try to "reverse engineer" the schema for their argument as I read through the book.
Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE)
In their Introduction to Part I of the book, Baggett and Walls write:
When we speak of classical theism explaining morality, we are speaking of an "inference to the best explanation" ("IBE," for short) case for theistic ethics. (14)
They then mention three important components of an IBE:
(1) the set of salient facts requiring explanation, (2) the list of explanation candidates, and (3) the criteria by which we reduce the field of candidates down to the one that is best. (14)
They then provide a convenient overview of the content to come throughout the book, grouped according to these three components. Regarding (1), the facts to be explained, Baggett and Walls write:
An abductive moral argument for God's existence begins with important moral realities. These are an important starting point, and such realities will include ontological matters (moral facts), epistemic matters (moral knowledge), performative matters (moral transformation), and facts about morality and rationality (including the convergence of happiness and moral virtue). (14)
While most of these are fairly self-explanatory, it is helpful to quote Baggett's and Wall's explanation of what they mean by "moral facts."
The sort of moral facts requiring explanation are objective, prescriptively binding moral duties, objective moral values, requisite moral freedom, ascriptions of moral responsibility, and other relevantly similar data of that ilk. (14)
Let's turn to (2), the list of explanation candidates. As I read Baggett and Walls, their list of explanation candidates includes the following: classical theism, deontological theories, consequentialist ethics, evolutionary ethics, social contract theory, and secular virtue accounts. (18)
Finally, as for (3), they provide the following list of abductive criteria: (a) explanatory power; (b) explanatory scope; (c) plausibility, (d) degree of "ad hoc-ness"; and (e) conformity with other beliefs.
The Argument Formulated as an IBE
As mentioned above, it is unfortunate that Baggett and Walls fail to state their abductive moral argument for theism in standard logical form. Nonetheless, their discussion (as summarized above) provides enough detail to arrive at a preliminary interpretation. Let B represent the conjunction of our relevant background information; E represent the conjunction of the facts to be explained; T represent classical theism; and A1, ..., An represent the alternative, nontheistic explanations listed above. I propose their argument has the following schema.
- Hypothesis T of the set {T, A1, ..., An} is the best explanation of the evidence E in being superior to its rivals {A1, ..., An} in satisfying the five criteria for explanation candidates.
- Therefore, other evidence held equal, T is more probable than naturalism.
This should serve as a needed reminder of a few important points to bear in mind as we proceed. If we were to conclude that classical theism provides, on examination, the best explanation of morality, and even assuming there is widespread agreement on the salient facts in need of explanation and theism's victory, what we can infer is limited in certain respects. First, perhaps morality increases the likelihood of theism but only by a marginal amount. Second, it should be said in such a case that the probability of theism has increased (by much or a little) relative to morality; in theory the probability of atheism could increase or decrease relative to other phenomena.... (20)
In order to evaluate the above schema, we may ask three questions. (1) Does the conclusion follow from the premises? (2) Are the proposed criteria for explanation candidates meaningful, unambiguous, and justified? (3) Does T, in fact, fulfill the five criteria for explanation candidates? In this blog post, I will only consider the first question.
Baggett and Walls explicitly claim that, if successful, their argument raises the probability of theism; they do not claim that, by itself, their argument shows that theism is more probable than not. (In the terminology of Richard Swinburne, the argument of Baggett and Walls is C-inductive, not P-inductive.) Because they use the language of probability, however, this immediately raises the objection: Baggett and Walls do not offer any reason to think that (2) follows from (1). Nor can they. Why? Because the above schema lacks a premise which says that the set {T, A1, ..., An} is jointly exhaustive. In my (admittedly incomplete) reading of their book so far, I have not found such a premise. Nor does this seem to be a mere speculative worry; Christian Miller, in his review of God and Cosmos, raises a related worry. He suggests that Baggett and Walls engage an incomplete set of anti-reductionist ("non-naturalistic") alternative explanations for moral facts and, more broadly, "don't engage in much detail with the leading work in meta-ethics today." So, if Miller and I are correct that Baggett and Walls do not consider a jointly exhaustive set of explanation candidates, this would be a major flaw in their argument. Their argument would violate the laws of probability.
In fairness to Baggett and Walls (and as Miller notes in his review), the "the field of contemporary meta-ethics is a vast and difficult terrain." And so Baggett and Walls might object that assessing a jointly exhaustive set of of secular alternative explanations is a monumental task because there might be too many. Miller, in his review, suggests that Baggett and Walls raise precisely this point later in the book. Nevertheless, different alternative explanations can be collected together in groups and evaluated as a group. So, for example, instead of discussing anti-reductionist (a/k/a "non-naturalist") theory AR1, then AR2, ..., and then ARn, one could simply mount an argument against all anti-reductionist theories as a set, criticizing features common all individual members of the set.- Hypothesis T of the set {T, A1, ..., An} is the best explanation of the evidence E in being superior to its rivals {A1, ..., An} in satisfying the five criteria for explanation candidates.
- The explanation candidates {T, A1, ..., An} are a jointly exhaustive set.
- Therefore, other evidence held equal, T is more probable than naturalism.
Wednesday, January 05, 2022
Does Robert Adams Reject Craig's Moral Argument?
"What is true about goodness if God does not exist, or is not in fact a suitable candidate for the role of the Good? This is a conditional question about the actual world, not about other possible worlds; and I am confident of my answer to it. If there is no God, or if God is in fact not a suitable candidate for the role of the Good, then my theory is false, but there may be same other salient, suitable candidate and so some other theory of the nature of the good."
Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 46.
- If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist.
- Objective moral values do exist.
- Therefore, God exists.